Hindu Activists Broaden the Fight Against Islamic Extremism

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

For years, men like Arish Kumar Sahani have spoken out about the abuses suffered by Hindus in Muslim-majority countries, as well as how Islamic extremism affects Hindus in India. Their concerns didn't often travel outside the Indian-American community, which has fiercely debated the rights of Muslims in a Hindu-majority India.

But the furor over Park 51 and more recent controversy over Congressman Peter King's hearings on Muslim radicalization have provided a mainstream platform for Hindu-American activists, while simultaneously diversifying the ranks of anti-Islamic protesters.

We welcome immigrants, and are proud to stand with Indian-Americans in our common struggle to defend freedom. They know firsthand what Islamization of a society means, and as such have an important message for the American public.

— Pamela Geller, blogger and Anti-Park 51 Organizer

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"We're requesting all Muslims: If you don't help us, we have no other option," said Sahani on Sunday, speaking at a demonstration about what he considers inadequate Muslim-American cooperation with law enforcement agencies. "We have to stop immigration of all Muslims - that should be our ultimate solution. God bless America!"

His proposal drew cheers from the crowd of about 35 supporters of Peter King in midtown Manhattan. Just a couple weeks earlier, the retired insurance agent from Queens was in Long Island, at another rally in support of King.

Sahani was born in India before Partition, in what is now Pakistan. He calls America "heaven on earth," and thinks Muslim immigrants are benefiting from their adopted country without giving back. The United States, he argues, needs to be aggressive in fighting Muslim forces.

"I don't want this country to become just like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India, which is becoming a soft nation for Islamic appeasement. We don't want this country to appease Islam."

At the rally, Sahani was joined by about ten other Indian-American men, most of them Hindus, as well as a couple Sikhs.

"The country should be made secure," said Pabitra Chaudhury, a Hindu activist. "We can't go to the airports without waiting in the line. And if it takes profiling of the people, what is the harm?"

One of the most prominent of the activists is Narain Kataria, a 76-year-old retiree from Queens. He helped establish the Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam, which includes four Indian, Sikh and Hindu groups, as well as the Zionist Organization of America and Americans for a Safe Israel.

"I have been watching Islam destroying everywhere," said Kataria, who has been active in Hindu nationalist groups in the U.S., including the Overseas Friends of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which raised funds for the BJP (Indian People's Party).

The BJP is one of India's most powerful political parties and rose to prominence on a platform of Indian national security, conservative social policies and a controversial campaign favoring the removal of a mosque in India to make way for a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Ram. The mosque, considered by some Hindus to have been built on Ram's birthplace, was destroyed by a Hindu mob in 1992, an episode that precipitated waves of Hindu-Muslim violence.

"Americans can learn lot of things from our experience," said Kataria, "because whatever we have seen, the way Islam operates, they believe that Islam is a peaceful religion, but there is no peace in Islam anywhere."

Not all Indian-Americans side with Kataria, and in past years political divisions within the diaspora -- between Hindu conservatives on one hand and a coalition of secular activists, human rights groups, Muslims and others -- have broken out into the open, with competing street protests and sharp exchanges in the press.

For their part, some Indian-American activists have vigorously opposed Peter King's hearings or marched in support of Park 51. Many of them argue that the heightened rhetoric, post-9/11 and more recently, have prompted hate crimes against not only Muslim Americans but a number of Sikhs as well.

Biju Mathew, an associate professor at Rider University in New Jersey and self-described leftist with the South Asia Solidarity Initiative, has frequently gone to battle with Kataria and his allies.

"Their sole focus is a particular kind of virulent bigotry against Islam," said Mathew. "I'm extremely concerned that something like this continues to happen."

Mathew argued that Hindu activists -- what he refers to as "the extreme right fringe" -- don't have the same clout in India as before, owing to shifting political structures. But he worried that even a few Indian-American activists at a demonstration would be interpreted by media outlets as stand-ins for the larger community.

Many Hindu activists, he said, find common cause with pro-Israel activists who also speak against the threat from Islamic extremism.

"The extreme Hindu right see themselves as an axis between America, Israel and India," he said.

Pamela Geller, the primary organizer behind the anti-Park 51 protests, said she had "a wonderful working relationship with Indian-American freedom fighters," some of whom have spoken at her events.

"They show that our resistance to Islamic supremacism is not born of racism or xenophobia," she said. "We welcome immigrants, and are proud to stand with Indian-Americans in our common struggle to defend freedom. They know firsthand what Islamization of a society means, and as such have an important message for the American public."

Kataria in turn said he was happy to work with Geller and her partner, Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.org.

"Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, they are my friends," he said. "We have been advising them that the big danger is coming here also, so be careful."

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Arun Venugopal is a reporter and the creator of Micropolis, WNYC’s multi-platform series examining race, sexuality, religion, street life and other issues that define New York City. He has been with the station since 2005, and has covered a wide range of stories, including the death of Sean Bell, the controversy over the Park 51 mosque and community center and Occupy Wall Street .

Comments [14]

ecks why
from western civilization

islam is a horrible ideology for human rights

5 key things about islam

1. mythical beliefs - all religions have these (faith) because its part of being a religion: having beliefs without proof until after the believer dies. the problem is people will believe almost anything.

2. totalitarianism - islam has no seperation of church and state: sharia law governs all. there is no free will in islam: only submission to the will of allah as conveniently determined by the imams who spew vapors to feather their own nests. there are no moderate muslims: they all support sharia law.

3. violence - islam leads the pack of all religions in violent tenets for their ideology & history: having eternal canonical imperatives for supremacy at all costs and calling for violence & intimidation as basic tools to achieve these goals.

4. dishonesty - only islam has dishonesty as a fundamental tenet: this stems from allah speaking to mohamhead & abrogation in the koran which is used to explain how mo's peaceful early life was superseded by his warlord role later.

5. misogyny - present day islam is still rooted in 8th century social ethics: treating females as property of men good only for children, severely limiting their activities, dressing them in shower curtains and worse.

conclusions ??

there really are NO redeeming qualities for this muddled pile of propaganda.

islam is just another fascist totalitarian ideology used by power hungry fanatics on yet another quest for worldwide domination and includes all the usual human rights abuses & suppression of freedoms.

We need more educated reporters working on the subject of this radical islam and these new muslim immigrant to free world and west how these muslim will help in destorying this great nations. India was divided and more is on the way.

At the March 6 Rally in New York City on Sunday, that protested King’s hearings, a ‘Christian’ pastor held a misleading and EXTREMELY DECEPTIVE sign: “Who would Jesus persecute? Islam is not my enemy!”See: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/06/us-muslim-protest-idUSTRE7252VY20110306

The ‘Jesus’ sign is EXTREMELY DECEPTIVE. If Jesus had been born in our time period, from the time his mother carried Jesus in her womb, Jesus and his family would have been targeted for MURDER by the Islamo Nazis for being JEWS living in their Biblical HOMELAND of Israel.

This is one in a Very Long List of Horrendous Major Muslim Terrorist Attacks in Israel:

March 2, 2002: Ten people were killed and over 50 were injured in a suicide bombing at 7 pm on Saturday evening near a yeshiva in the ultra-Orthodox Beit Yisrael neighborhood in the center of Jerusalem where people had gathered for a bar-mitzva celebration. The terrorist detonated the bomb next to a group of women waiting with their baby carriages for their husbands to leave the nearby synagogue. Six children were among the victims. The Fatah Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade took responsibility for the attack. http://www.adl.org/israel/israel_attacks.asp

There have been no Muslim street demonstration to protest the cruel Islamic attacks on non-Muslims in New York, Bali, India, Philippines, Israel, London, Beslan, Madrid and more.

Council on American-Islamic Relations: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faiths, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth." - Omar Ahmad (CAIR co-founder).

ALL of the major Muslim organizations in America are Muslim Brotherhood front groups.

From the document of the Muslim Brotherhood in North America:

The process of settlement is a "Civilization-Jihadist Process" and all the word means. The Ikhwan [Arabic for brothers] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad to eliminate and destroy the Western civilization from within, and sabotage its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers, so that it is eliminated, and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions.

It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny..."

And deathly silent over severe persecution endured by non-Muslims in majority Muslim countries and majority Muslim areas. In Pakistan, Bangladesh and Egypt, persecution of Hindus, Sikhs and Christians is so bad, they ALL need rescuing. Every day is lived in fear. G-D help them.

The problem is islam, naive lefties. Islam is a fascist, totalitarian ideology. Lots of lazy moral equivalency here by lefties who have never read the koran, hadith or studied the life of the murderer/rapist/assassin/thief/pedophile Muhammed.

It is not the extreme right wing fringe that opposes islam in india. muslims have killed 80 million hindus in 14 centuries of jihad. thousands of hindu temples were destroyed. many of the muslims living in india were originally hindu but were products of raped women/forcibly converted hindus.

glad to see hindus are getting some balls - if that means some useful idiot -calls them 'extreme' or 'racist' who cares. the left will be destroyed by shariah, women's rights will be destroyed as will freedom of speech, conscience. all non-muslims will have fewer rights. wake up and grow up naive lefties! learn from india's history.

Today, Islam has successfully managed to denude Pakistan of almost ALL its Hindu & Sikh population since partition in 1947. Pakistan today is 98% Muslim and as if that was not pure enough, beheadings of Sikhs (as in last Feb), desecrating of Hindu temples by turning them into hotels, not to mention persecution of Christians. In 1971 the Pak army had expressed orders to cleanse E Pakistan, present Bangladesh of ALL Hindus. The premise of the above is Islamic supremacy. Islam is a political doctrine for complete world domination where nice things like chopping hands, heads, Jizya can be carried out. Say NO to Islamic deceit and expansion.

I can't believe that NPR actually gives people like this a platform to speak their hate and make ridiculous accusation that reek of bigotry..and why should anyone care what Pamela Gellar, an obvious Muslim hater think? shame on you NPR, thankfully I hadn't gotten around to joining the pledge drive, I now don't intend to all

I'd like to compliment NPR for running such a balanced, incisive report about Mr. Kataria and his organization. I can attest to the sincerity of this man's beliefs and his commitment to educating the American public.

He was at the rally in support of Congressman King this weekend, despite the inclement weather:

The BJP has among its supporters admirers of Adolph Hitler and is an avowedly fascist nationalist organization. It has organized pogroms against minority Muslims in India repeatedly. A Hindu nationalist murdered Gandhi. They are one of the most pressing threats to a multi-confessional Indian democracy, and now they're poisoning American democracy as well. Glad there were only a handful of them, although they sure got a lot of ink here. Their support for Rep. King's witch-hunt speaks volumes.

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